Saturday, June 26, 2010

Roots

A Canadian friend of mine of Egyptian origin began, after retirement, to read in Arabic again, something he had set aside for many years. The pianist I live with has plunged into her Celtic roots, genealogy, music and literature, after 70 years of relative indifference. She and my daughter are off to the amateur music camp for a week to do piano and fiddling and bodhran! It's in their collagen. I have embarked on random posting that includes rooting up old truffles of prairie life. It may be trite but it seems to me that the more you have become history, the more you appreciate history, including your own! My brothers, I suspect, have better and more replete memories of past events than I do, but they are younger and are not yet pursued by the Spectre of Dementia and the need to get it down before it is lost. The biggest thing one has going for oneself at this stage is available time. The more those remember of the past, the more they're doomed to report it! The pianist and I spent 5 days in Argyll and the Islands. Her family left from Tobermory on the Pilgrim in 1822. We were in Iona as well. I can appreciate her embrace of her roots and the feeling it invokes, but I reserve the right to tease. These Celtic roots for instance! I can't think of another word where "e" follows "c" that is pronounced with a hard "c" (k). Think Boston Celtics. Think celebrate, certainty, etc. All soft "c ". I kid her that there are no rules for English language up there in the Argyll. Gaelic I guess!

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